"First, get the townspeople out."
Macao raised a hand and released a ball of purple flame. The flame struck the enclosed space and came back around from the other side.
Lin Yuan folded an opening into the boundary that allowed only the flame to pass through.
"Only your fire can get out. Don't touch the edge."
"You say that like I'm going to stick my hand in."
Macao sent the fireball through, and the space closed behind it.
The next moment, three pillars of fire burst above Sunken Bell Town, signaling an emergency evacuation.
When the mayor saw the signal, he immediately organized everyone to evacuate the town with the children and the missing people.
The roots beneath the church seemed to sense that their prey was leaving.
The whole mountain shook violently. Countless black strands poured out of the cracks, scrambling to wrap themselves around the black stone fragment.
"It's pulling all its roots back to the core," Wakaba said.
"Perfect." Lin Yuan watched the tangled strands. "That saves us the trouble of finding them one by one."
"Can you pull them all back at once?" Macao asked.
"No matter where these roots grow, they're all connected to the stone fragment. If I shorten all the distances between them, I can pull the roots back to the church."
Mira flexed her demon claws. "What happens after you pull them back?"
"You smash it."
"I like this plan."
"Don't celebrate yet." Macao pointed at the ever-multiplying mouths. "We need to keep those things in place until Lin Yuan finishes his magic."
Wakaba's smoke spread first, hugging the ground as it enveloped the black stone fragment. Macao's purple flames followed close behind, forming eight burning chains around the smoke and pinning the core firmly in place.
The cursed object struggled wildly.
Mouths sprouted from the black strands. Instead of promising abundant harvests, they called out the names most familiar to the four.
Before Mira, her younger siblings cried out for help.
Macao heard Guild members calling out amid the flames.
Wakaba heard townspeople accusing them of arriving too late.
"A fake is a fake." Mira smashed the nearest mouth with a punch. "Lisanna would never call me in that tone."
"And if the Guild were on fire, no one would wait around calling for help," Macao said. "They'd get the booze out first."
Wakaba blew out a mouthful of smoke. "What reliable comrades."
Unable to shake the three with fear, the black strands all turned toward Lin Yuan.
Lin Yuan ignored the whispers.
He spread his hands, and the space in his vision was covered by hundreds of black-and-silver lines. Every root of the cursed object was connected to the core, yet each was wrapped in a layer of power stolen from faith.
That layer of power made the townspeople believe it was a god and allowed it to interfere with people's wills with a single sentence.
An intense hunger welled up in Lin Yuan's palm once more.
This time, he didn't resist it.
He had rejected the Authority because it belonged to his sealed self in the first place; the so-called divinity before him, however, was merely residue the cursed object had stolen from countless offerings.
Spatial God-Slaying Magic Power spread along the connections, stripping away the gray light on the black strands layer by layer and drawing it into Lin Yuan's palm. The majesty in the cursed object's voice rapidly faded, leaving only beastlike screams.
"You... must not devour a god..."
"But you're not a god."
The last layer of gray light vanished.
Lin Yuan clapped his hands together.
The distances between the roots spread throughout the ground beneath Sunken Bell Town were shortened at once. Black strands beneath the streets, in the wells, and in the cellars tore free of the soil and contracted back along their paths toward the mountaintop.
A succession of muffled crashes came from afar.
Countless roots burst through the church's foundation and piled into the basement like a fishing net hauled ashore.
The cursed object instantly swelled several times its size. Thousands of mouths opened at once, filling nearly all the available space.
"Mira!" Macao shouted.
She had already beaten her wings and risen just beneath the roof.
In her complete Satan Soul form, she gathered magic power between her claws and compressed it into a mass of constantly rotating black light. Lin Yuan folded the distance between her and the core, while Wakaba's smoke swept aside the roots blocking her view.
Mira swooped down from above.
Black magic power pierced through layers of mouths, and her claws seized the stone fragment held by the flames.
The cursed object immediately contracted, trying to hide its core back underground.
Macao's eight chains of fire snapped taut at once.
"Don't even think about running!"
Using the chains to hold it in place, Mira forcibly tore the stone fragment from the mass of flesh.
She turned in midair and hurled the core into the space Lin Yuan had folded in advance.
The stone fragment vanished in front of Mira, only to reappear in the same spot again and again. Each time it appeared, it collided once more with her swinging demon fist.
The first punch cracked the stone fragment.
The second shattered every hole at once.
When the third punch landed, decades of accumulated fear exploded into black flecks that filled the air, along with the false divinity.
The entire church shook violently.
The roots spread beneath the town lost their power and rapidly withered. Macao and Wakaba raised barriers of flame and smoke at the same time, blocking the falling stones.
Mira landed, and the scales on her body gradually faded.
"Is it over?"
"The core is gone," Lin Yuan said.
Just as the last black fleck was about to dissipate, a serpentine marking suddenly lit up on the ground.
It was identical to the marking that had coiled around the base of the statue earlier, but the moment Lin Yuan looked at it, it raised its head and slipped between two lines of space like a real snake.
Lin Yuan immediately reached out to grab it.
By the time his fingertips closed, the snake marking had vanished.
Mira walked over to him. "Is there something else?"
Lin Yuan stared at the empty crack.
"A snake just escaped through here."